


Vodka & Instant Coffee

by Galena



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Gen, brief appearance by Ana, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 02:44:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9102967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galena/pseuds/Galena
Summary: Genji is injured; Zarya comes to his aid.Maybe the cyborg isn't so bad after all.





	

The building came apart around him. Genji plunged through falling concrete and iron rebar, vision zero in a haze of dust. He scrabbled, desperate to keep his footing, swapped his vision to infrared but that was no better, turned, stumbled, blind-

“Get out of there, Shimada!”

“I’m getting-” he replied and he almost made it.

The floor dropped away and he scrambled to back pedal, just as the ceiling above pancaked down on top of him. Genji gasped a breath to scream but the weight drove the air from his lungs in a ragged hiss.

It knocked him out, briefly. He came to on his back, immobilized, with Ana’s voice demanding his position. He could barely breathe for the blanket of rubble pressing down on him. His limbs were trapped, his head was twisted to one side, and he could smell blood and ozone. 

Genji tried to answer Ana’s call but his mouth was full of blood and shards of concrete and plasticized metal that cut into his gums and propped his jaw open awkwardly. He made a weak cough and tried to breathe through his nose. Nope, that was smashed too. His eyes watered in the dark behind his mask as he concentrated on getting air into his lungs through the maze of blood and debris in his throat.

“One of you get up to his position and give me a status report!”

Genji waited and breathed and listened to his heartbeat and to the ruined building still shifting around and above him. His jaw ached. His tongue was dry. 

After 162 breaths, he heard someone moving through the rubble. They stepped heavily, but carefully, coming steadily toward him, following the signal from his locator beacon.

“I have his position, Captain.” 

It was Zarya.

A burst of uncertainty curdled in his stomach. She had never shown him anything less than professionalism during missions but on base, on their own time, she avoided him and when she couldn't she was curt with him.

She was, however, near the top of the list of people he would choose to dig him out of a heap of concrete. He could hear her moving rubble already, working towards him. 45 breaths and he could feel the pressure on his right leg decrease. Another 40 breaths and his left foot could twitch. His hips and stomach and chest followed, and finally she moved enough wreckage off him that he could see her out the corner of one eye.

“Are you alive, Shimada?”

He gasped a rough breath and tried to nod. His neck was still jammed, so he made a tiny noise of distress instead. She leaned close to him.

“I think he's breathing,” she said. “I can hear breathing. His chest isn't moving. None of the little lights on him are glowing. Does he-? No, his visor is smashed. I don't know. He made sounds. Yes? ...really? Okay. Yes, of course.”

Zarya tugged off her glove and put two fingers against his throat, just under his jaw. Her brow furrowed.

“Yes, he has a pulse. I'll clear this junk off him and wait for you then.”

The pressure on his arms lifted but Genji found he couldn't move them. He had only the coarsest sense of himself everywhere except inside his helmet. One or more of the major sensory relays in his back must have been damaged.

Zarya crouched beside him and reached toward his face.

Genji closed his eyes. He could feel grit and heat on one side of his face and assumed his mask was broken. She'd never seen him with it off and he had no desire to bare his face to her but it was no longer a choice.

“Let me see if I can move this.” Her voice was soft and he saw her hand reach into his field of vision. She brushed aside blood-slicked shards of glass and metal with careful fingers and he realized it was his mask, smashed into his face and partially lodged in his mouth. She paused, brought a silver flask out from inside her coat and doused one hand with the contents. As an after thought, she poured some of it over his mouth and chin.

It smelled and tasted like pure ethanol. Genji gagged on the trickle that touched his tongue. Zarya’s fingers were in his mouth now, ever so carefully removing bits of glass. She clucked gently when he choked.

“It's just vodka, you can swallow it.” She made eye contact with him and Genji began to relax. Her expression was kind. “There is a big piece of glass stuck against the roof of your mouth.” He could feel it, now that she'd pulled out the rest. It was wedged between his soft palate and lower molars. “You want me to get rid of it? You're going to bleed.”

“Yuh,” said Genji as clearly as he could.

She nodded once, pulled his jaw open further with her other hand and yanked the shard out.

“ _ Itai!”  _  Genji’s eyes watered, spilling down his cheeks. “ _ Itai, itai…” _ Zarya didn't comment, but she cradled his wrenched jaw in her palm, helping him ease it shut. He squeezed his eyes closed and concentrated on breathing until the pain receded.

She helped him sit up, and supported him when it became obvious he couldn't do it on his own. His arms and legs were still limp and useless. He leaned on her shoulder, unable to hold his head up and drooled blood on her uniform.

“You are okay,” she said, one hand supporting his head and shoulders while he shuddered. His breathing improved. His nervous relays began to come online and he stopped shaking.

“Captain Amari is on her way. We will wait for her.”

“Yuh,” he said again. His mouth hurt and his throat burned from the vodka. He closed his eyes and let her hold him up.

Zarya held him until Ana arrived. She checked him over, quick, efficient, pinching at him.

“You're in no danger, Genji. Scoop him up, Zarya dear, bring him along.”

Zarya reached down and picked him up as though he were a child, maneuvering his legs around her waist and arms around her shoulders, leaning his weight against her chest, one forearm supporting him. She carried her particle cannon with the other hand and Genji couldn't help but be impressed. 

As they left the ruins, she shifted him so that his head fell at an angle, hiding his smashed visor against her neck and Genji was startled by the accommodation.

Ana led the way, rifle at the ready, and Zarya carried him to their transport. 

* * *

He didn't see her for several days, not until he was repaired and cleaned and hungry. She nodded to him when they met in the kitchen, more civility than she had ever shown him before.

“Thank you, Ms Zaryanova, for rescuing me.” He made a quick bow to her. 

“It was nothing,” she replied but her voice was lighter.

Genji filled the electric kettle and turned it on. Zarya was watching him, not shy.

“Will there be enough water for me to make another cup of tea?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She nodded and turned to her tablet.

Genji waited for the water to boil and watched her read, chin propped on one fist. 

“May I join you?” he asked.

She looked up and the light in her expression wavered. “All right.” Well, that was better than her previous responses, which had tended toward  _ “I was just leaving” _ or  _ “do what you like” _ .

The kettle boiled and Genji filled his waiting mug. He sat while Zarya moved to refill her own. Then she leaned against the counter and fixed him with a thoughtful gaze.

“Can I talk to you?” she said.

Genji bobbed his head once. He folded his hands around the hot mug and waited.

“You are not a bad man,” she said haltingly. “I know this. You have shown yourself to be very good at your job and I respect that. And I know… that what you are is not your fault.”

“Ms Zaryanova,” he began, “I can be a good man  _ and  _ a cyborg. Please don't say that I can be the one despite the other.”

She looked at her tea. “I know that you are both. I know that  _ now.  _ I want to apologize for being rude to you in the past. It is… it is a hard thing to think of machines as anything other than an enemy.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I did not know you felt pain or that you would bleed. I did not know that there were machines that could be  _ good people _ .”

Genji hesitated for a moment before slowly unlocking his mask. On the one hand, showing his face made him more human and seemed an easy route to earn her trust, perhaps at the expense of her tolerance for his machine self. 

On the other hand he wanted to drink.

“Most of the world thinks as you do. As you did?” He didn't look at her as he brought the cup to his lips and clumsily navigated the rim.

“It is not easy to change that thinking,” she said and moved to rejoin him at the table. She leaned toward him slightly. “You learn the shape of your enemy so that you can react quickly in their presence. But when your allies have the same shape… Your omnic friend has shown me nothing but tolerance and yet I am afraid of him.”

Genji burned his lip on the hot ceramic and wrinkled his nose at the sting. “I never fought the omnics the way that you did. Only with Overwatch and only in this body. I think I might have feared him initially too, if I had done what you did.”

Zarya was quiet for a moment, contemplating her mug. “This is a strange place,” she said. “A strange group. I am uncomfortable sometimes and yet…”

“Yes,” he said and smiled a little. “It  _ is _ strange but it is  _ good  _ too.”

She gave him a tentative smile and Genji felt like the sun had come out. Then she gestured to his mug.

“I do not know if I can trust a man who drinks  _ instant coffee _ , though _. _ ”

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda ship it. x_x


End file.
